Large Technical Systems and the Environment 

Linköping Universitet,  

SE‐581 85 Linköping, Sweden 
Linköping 2009

Incineration as a waste recycling strategy in developing countries;

the case of Accra, Ghana

Mesfin Taye
Wisdom Kanda
Md Toufiqur Rahman
Francis Atta Kuranchie
Siva Kalyan Varma Pinama Raju

SUPERVISOR: MICHAEL MARTIN

 
 
Summary
In a developing country like Ghana low cost energy sources would serve in the best interest
of economic development. This can be achieved by changing the content of the national
energy supply from conventional expensive sources to cheaper, renewable and
environmentally friendly sources.

Increasing waste generation remains a persistent problem. A salient waste management

problem is that responsible municipal assemblies have allocated a marginal portion of
funding for this purpose. Waste management methods employed such as open air burning,
public dumps and land filling are problematic because of their inherent environmental issues.
Other barriers to sustainable waste management include unavailable correct data on the
quantity and characteristics of waste generated and its specific impacts on the environment.
Coupled with the above are problems of low level technology and the perception that waste
management is a less important large technical system compared with other municipal
services.

The project work addresses the environmental impacts of incineration with energy recovery
of municipal solid waste as a recycling strategy in a developing country and discusses the
feasibility of implementing such a solution. The results indicate that incineration with energy
recovery is a better alternative to the current waste management systems in place from an
environmental point of view. For a feasible integration of the system there needs to be
adjustments in the current waste management practices to incorporate issues such as source
sorting and other measures to prevent incineration of toxic waste.

 
 
Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION ....................................................................................................................................... 1 

1.1 Background ................................................................................................................................... 1 

1.2 Aim ................................................................................................................................................ 1 

1.3 Scope ............................................................................................................................................. 1 

2.0 METHOD ............................................................................................................................................ 1 

3. 0 RESULTS ............................................................................................................................................ 2 

3.1. Waste management and collection in Accra, Ghana. .................................................................. 2 

3.1.1 Municipal solid waste composition in Accra, Ghana ............................................................. 2 

3.1.2 Solid waste management in Accra, Ghana ............................................................................ 3 

3.1.3 Solid Waste Collection ........................................................................................................... 3 

3.1.4 Solid waste disposal ............................................................................................................... 4 

3.2 Energy crises ................................................................................................................................. 4 

4.0 DISCUSSION ....................................................................................................................................... 5 

4.1 Environmental impact of waste .................................................................................................... 5 

4.2 Feasibility of Incineration as a waste management system ......................................................... 5 

4.3 Environmental impact of incineration plant ................................................................................. 6 

5.0 CONCLUSION ..................................................................................................................................... 7 

6.0 REFERENCES ...................................................................................................................................... 7 

   

   

 
 
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background

Ghana is booming with economic activities. With a corresponding increase in population and
commercial activities there has been persistent issues about large volumes of waste generated
which is left untreated. With an average waste generation rate of 0.7kg/cap/day
environmental degradation has become a threat (Tsiboe and Marbell, 2004). The other side of
the coin also is the continuous energy crisis which hit the country when there is shortage of
rainfall due to over reliance on hydropower.

With the current energy supply being contributed by 10% hydropower, 30% fossil fuel and
60% wood (Kermausuor and Brew, 2007) many issues within energy sector remain a puzzle.
Are these trees cut down for charcoal production being replaced through replanting? What
are the environmental implications of the burning of this forest biomass?

As has always been the case the answer to this questions lies within the problem. Large
amount of municipal waste is generated daily in the major cities in Ghana which are either
left untreated to decompose at landfills or burnt openly.

1.2 Aim

The aim of the project is to evaluate incineration with energy recovery as an environmentally
sustainable way of municipal waste management in developing countries by taking Accra,
Ghana as a system for study. Is the waste being generated in developing countries plenty and
good enough to run a proposed incineration plant without requiring an extra fuel (burners)?
From an environmental perspective, what advantages would incineration have over simple
waste littering and land filling?

1.3 Scope
The project work takes an in depth look into municipal waste generated in developing
countries and how incineration with energy recovery can be used as a means to solve the
environmental challenge and also produce energy.

2.0 METHOD
The internet, library and conference proceedings were the main source for gathered
information.

For an effective output, the project work was divided into the following major sections and
each member of the group conducted an in depth research on a particular section.

 Municipal solid waste definition and classification

 Incineration with energy recovery

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  Environmental impacts of incineration as a waste management strategy

 The possibility and challenges of integrating incineration with energy recovery in

developing countries.

From a critical review of gathered information, followed with discussions among the project
group, deductions and conclusions are drawn in line of the project aim.

3. 0 RESULTS
Waste is any substance or objects the holder castes away, intends to caste away or is required
to caste away because the holder considers it to be of no use.

Waste classification is generally based on the material state as solid, liquid, gas and
radioactive; its general toxicity inert, hazardous and general waste; and its source as
municipal, industrial or agricultural waste. From municipal point of view it can be defined as
waste emanating from households, as well as other waste, which, because of its nature or
composition, is similar to waste from households (EU).

3.1. Waste management and collection in Accra, Ghana.

3.1.1 Municipal solid waste composition in Accra, Ghana
Accra produces about 760,000 tons of municipal solid waste (MSW) per year or
approximately 2000 metric tons per day (EPA, 2002). These are estimates and the real values
are probably more than these quantities. The municipal waste stream is composed of
domestic such as food waste, garden waste, sweepings, ash, packaging materials, textiles and
electric and electronic waste. Industrial waste include metals, wood, textiles, plastic; food
waste from slaughter houses, cocoa processing factories, fruit processing and grain mills.
Commercial activities generate waste with high food and plastic contents while waste paper
which is about 4.2% of MSW comes from schools and offices. As depicted in
Figure 1, the waste stream has a largely organic based which is contributed by households.

Figure1. Municipal waste composition in Accra (Data AMA, 1993) (Source: Kramer et al,
1994).

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3.1.2 Solid waste management in Accra, Ghana
The approach to municipal solid waste management has been characterized by unplanned
solutions such as: mobilizing people to collect waste and de-silt chocked gutters after a flood
disaster; temporal allocation of waste collection contracts and damping or building a central
solid waste composting plant. The fact to the issue is that stakeholders trying helplessly to
solve this issue need to work in a collaborative effort with a rather proactive systems
perspective. No single solution can totally solve the problem.

Typically waste disposal and management is largely the responsibility of the municipal
assembly. The amount of waste generated far exceeds the collection capacity of the municipal
assembly. The municipal assembly provides containers at car packs, streets, commercial and
institutional areas for waste collection. This waste is simply dumped into the containers
without any form of source sorting. The municipal assembly conveys these containers when
full to public landfills. The remaining waste is handled by individual households either by
burning or burying in the ground.
As depicted in the Figure 2 below public dump is employed as the main waste disposal
amounting 54% of the current Accra waste management system, followed by other
environmentally hazardous methods such as open air burning and burying by individual
households.

Figure 2. Waste disposal methods in Accra (Data AMA, 1993) (Source: Kramer et al, 1994).

3.1.3 Solid Waste Collection

The city has been divided into waste collection zones where a private waste collection
company is contracted to collect waste on behalf of the municipal assembly. The waste is
taken by road directly to the disposal sites. A house-to-house collection of household waste
also exists in well planned communities in the municipality. Residents pay waste collection
companies which then pay Accra Municipal Assembly (AMA) for using their dump sites for
disposing off their waste.

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In low income communities there is a centralised waste collection system in which residents
disposes off their waste into a container which is collected for disposal weekly. Residents do
not pay any fee for such an activity.
Despite these strategies, fractions of the waste as can be seen in Table 1 remain uncollected.

Table 1. Average waste collection over the past 6 years. Data, AMA waste management
department (Source: Dotseh Anomany, 2004)

Table 1: Volume and Daily Average tonnage Average tonnage

tonnage of waste collected in generated/day collected/day
Accra over the past 6 years.
Year

1998 750 450 - 600

1999 960 600 -800

2000 1650 1200 – 1500

2001 1700 1300 - 1500

2002 1720 1300 – 1500

2003 1800 1300 – 1500

The disposal system is characterized by inappropriate location of disposal sites coupled with
uncontrolled and ecologically harmful land filling. At present, the dumping grounds are not
engineered to serve as sanitary landfill sites. They therefore constitute high potential for the
spread of infections through run offs during rains and contamination of underground water.

3.1.4 Solid waste disposal

Solid waste is disposed off at landfills or dumping grounds marked with bad ecological
outputs. The outcome serves a high potential for leaching of infections and toxic waste to
contaminate underground water sources.

3.2 Energy crises

Persistent crises of energy production have become major problem of people of Ghana. As
the case is in most developing countries, electrical power production in the country has long
been on shoulder of hydro-dam system that accounts for 10% of the energy source. Electric
power production of a hydropower plant is directly connected with distribution and intensity
of rainfall in any given season. A recent energy system analysis showed a recurring failure of
the hydro-dam systems to meet the electricity demand. And the rain has been blamed to have
caused these crises that pulled down the young economy of Ghana by 2.2% over a single
year. (Kermausuor and Brew, 2007) Furthermore, forest wood is being used as source of
energy that fuels 60% of household, commercial and in some cases industrial energy
demands. And this clearly poses a key problem on the forest reserve and regional climate
change. The remaining 30% of energy demand gets its segment from petroleum. A

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cumulative overlook on the energy sources of Ghana puts the country amongst those with a
high risk susceptible energy system.

4.0 DISCUSSION
4.1 Environmental impact of waste
At present, no planned disposal system is devised in most developing countries to better
manage the generated waste. Same case holds in Accra, Ghana. Waste is seen littered
everywhere within the vicinity of the city. Public dumping sites are not under proper
utilization. Besides, burning of waste in these public damping sites is becoming a common
incidence. Eventually, these contributes to environmental damages such as deposition of
toxic waste gases to the atmosphere, degradation of beautiful outlook of the municipality,
chocking of drainage systems which further causes flooding during the rain seasons. The
flooding becomes a convenient place for breeding of diseases such as malaria, diarrhoea and
dysentery, and also this waste at major stake could degrade the quality of soil structure
causing problem to the agriculture of the country.

Several proposals have been presented by various researchers and institutions in relation to
sustainable ways of waste handling in developing countries. This study paper considers
incineration with energy recovery technology as a possible solution. The case of Accra,
Ghana has been taken as a sample to evaluate the practicality of integrating the technology as
a waste management strategy in a developing country.

4.2 Feasibility of Incineration as a waste management system

Incineration is a thermal waste treatment process which involves the combustion of waste at
high temperatures in the presence of oxygen. Waste is collected and transported to an
incineration plant. In the incinerators, Combustion of waste at a temperature of 800 oC and
above is performed which results in a tremendous amount of heat energy. By-products of this
process mostly include bottom ash, particulates and flue gases such as CO2, CO, NxO, SOx.

At the outset, an incineration plant needs a well organized waste collection system. In most
developing countries such as Ghana, waste collection is often highly inefficient as the
collection workers are untrained, underpaid, poorly encouraged, and have no or limited
access of tools and vehicles that could facilitate the task. Efficient collection, transportation
and disposal of waste should be enacted ahead of the project implementation to guarantee a
smooth flow of waste to the plant during operation.

An essential consideration while analysing project feasibility of a waste incinerator is nature

(composition) of the waste and its calorific value. Due to the socio-economic status in many
low to middle level income countries, amount of highly combustible resources in the waste is
limited. Less organized and informal recycling activities in the waste handling system also
tend to further reduce the amount of paper, cardboard, and plastic composition of the waste.
Moreover, the waste is prone to high ash and moisture content which apparently reduces
combustibility. Municipal solid waste in such areas therefore often falls under a low calorific

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value and its ability to burn without auxiliary fuel (burners) is uncertain. However, industrial,
commercial, and institutional wastes (except from market source) have significant calorific
value. According to a conducted research, the mean gross calorific value of waste in Accra is
16.85MJ/Kg and has an average moisture content of 62.2% by weight. (Fobil et al, 2005),
Thus, certain measures need to be taken to make incineration possible in countries like
Ghana. Mixing wastes of different source is one mechanism to raise and meet the lowest
permissible calorific value of junk that must reach to incinerators. Lower calorific value must
on average be at least 7 MJ/kg, and must never fall below 6 MJ/kg in any season. (Fobil et al,
2005)

More over, incinerators are one of the most expensive choices of waste management systems
as they require a high maintenance and operation cost (World Bank, 1999). For a plant to be
economically feasible, Expense must be supported by income such as selling of generated
energy. Political and socio-economic considerations play a vital role at the time of fixing the
price of waste-generated energy. A high price resulting in a reduction of the waste tipping fee
favours the waste sector, and low energy prices favour the energy consumers.

4.3 Environmental impact of incineration plant

‘The incinerator industry promotes that incinerators are having zero emissions so they are
safe for community and environment but the truth is all incinerator emits dangerous
compounds like dioxins and other pollutants that contaminate our land, air and water.’ Global
Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA, 2008).

Emissions from incinerators include heavy metals such as lead, arsenic and mercury, acid
gases, and also volatile hydrocarbons such as dioxins and furans. Mixing of toxic materials at
higher temperatures form dioxins and furans. Health impacts of dioxins includes cancer, birth
effects, diabetics, immune system damage and etc, but the highest risk goes to children
because concentrated dioxin passes from mother to child while breast feeding. Incinerator
workers also face high risk even though they are provided with standard protective
equipment. Particles called ultra-fines or nano-particles cause for concern about incinerator
emissions of dioxin and other toxins. The size of ultra fine particles ranges from 1 to 100
nano-meters making them difficult to capture with pollutant filtering devices. These ultra-
fines account 1-5 percent of all airborne particles in urban air. (GAIA, 2008) Besides the
pollutants coming from air it is also important to look at other outputs which are coming out
from incinerators.

In addition to these toxic gas emissions, incineration has also a solid waste, though reduced
by 45% from the original volume, which needs to be land filled. Air pollution control devices
in incinerators capture and concentrate the toxic pollutants, but they don’t totally eliminate
them. These concentrated toxic substances are intermittently collected and disposed off in
landfills. At some point landfills will leak and then toxic pollutants will leach into soil and
ground water thereby polluting ecosystems and communities.

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5.0 CONCLUSION
An ingenious solution that reduces impact of generated waste in developing countries like
Ghana is a must to work on. Prior to execution of any waste based projects such as
incinerators, well organized waste collection and handling system need to be realized. This
begins from merger of good waste disposal culture in daily lives of the people. Amongst all,
obtained data on waste composition and quality (calorific value) of Accra portrays a
possibility of erecting an incineration plant. But, much is needed to be done towards
improving the waste disposal culture of the people. Though is hard to generalize over
existence of similar conditions in all developing countries, it is more likely to have same
pattern to that of Accra, Ghana.

Such energy production plant therefore consumes unwanted waste and generate tremendous
amount of heat energy. From what has been observed on the current energy demand of
Ghana, a proposal of generated heat for electricity production and industrial steam supply
would not be a vague preference. The obtained heat energy can further be utilized for
purposes such as providing hot tap water for consumers, space heating and cooling, e.t.c.
Besides, the plant also reduces the amount of waste which should have been sent to landfills
otherwise. By doing this, emission of GHG (Green House Gases) such as methane and
leaching of toxic materials from landfills is highly reduced.

To better effect environmental friendliness and validity of incineration plant over land filling,
techniques which reduce emission of toxics from incinerators need to be thought up.
Provision of end of pipe technologies which traps fly ashes, toxic gases and flue gases makes
the plant more effective in terms of reduced emission. Simultaneously, similar techniques
need to be adopted in places where bottom ash is disposed.

6.0 REFERENCES

1. Dotseh Anomany, E. (2004). ‘ Integration of municipal solid waste management in

Accra (Ghana): bioreactor treatment technology as an integral part of the management
process’ Master of Science Thesis, International Environmental Science, Lund
University, Sweden.
 
2. Environmental Protection Agency (2002). Ghana’s State of the Environment Report

3. Fobil, J.N., Carboo, D. And Armah, N.A. (2005). ‘Evaluation of municipal solid
wastes (MSW) for utilisation in energy production in developing countries’, Int. J.
Environmental Technology and Management, Vol. 5, No. 1, pp.76–86.

4. Incinerators Trash Community Health Global Alliance for incinerator Alternatives

(GAIA) www.zerowarming.org dave@no-burn.org June, 2008) [Accessed: 9 Nov.
2009]

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 5. Kermausuor, F. and Brew-Hammond, A. (2007). Energy crises in Ghana.

6. Kramer, H., Jechimer, K., Lengsfeld, S. and Nartey-Tokoll, I.B. (1994).

Determination of Major Planning Data for Solid Waste Management in Accra
Metropolis, Accra Metropolitan Assembly, Waste Management Department, Accra,
Ghana.

7. Tsiboe, I. A. and Marbell, E. (2004). A look at urban waste disposal Problems in

Accra, Ghana.

8. World Bank (1999). Decision Makers Guide to Municipal solid waste incineration.

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